Columns

SANTA FE – How do you ever find time to research all your columns? It’s the most frequently asked question I receive about my journalistic endeavor.
If my wife is around, she usually jokes that I just make it up, but that’s not true.
I have plenty of readers who call me on any incorrect information. Over 40 years of working in various capacities at the Capitol, plus another 20 years of being aware of what was going on in Santa Fe give me a deep background from which to draw.
But a guy can’t remember everything. So when I need to check a fact, I have a handy little book within reach that tells me nearly everything I need to know about our state.
It is called the New Mexico Blue Book, a treasury of information about state and local government, past and present.
You can obtain your own copy of the New Mexico Blue Book by calling Secretary of State Dianna Duran’s Office at 1-800-477-3632. The cost is $10.95 and well worth it.
The 2012 Blue Book is a collector’s item. It is the centennial edition of the Blue Book which is published by the Secretary of State’s office every two years.

Young adults applying for college or preparing to enter the workforce are sometimes shocked to find out that certain behaviors that were either tolerated or ignored when they were younger now fall under closer scrutiny and could actually hurt their advancement possibilities. Among the biggest culprits are oversharing sensitive personal information in public forums and getting extreme tattoos or body art that may not yet be fully acceptable in certain work environments.
Red flags. It should be common knowledge that many employers perform online profile searches of job or internship candidates. They’ll scour public postings on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube looking for inappropriate content like racy photos or videos, racist remarks or evidence of illegal activities that would rule inappropriate candidates.
But many people don’t realize that colleges, insurance companies, law enforcement and government agencies sometimes do the same. Thus, an underage student hoping to boost his cool factor by posting photos that show him engaging in drinking games could be disqualified for college admission or even have his scholarship revoked.

At first glance, last week’s election might seem to have been pretty much a “status quo” affair.
President Obama remains in the White House for another four years. Republicans will continue to control the U.S. House of Representatives for at least two more years, whereas a strengthened Democratic majority will prevail in the U.S. Senate.
In New Mexico, the election left Democrats in control of the Legislature and Republican Gov. Susana Martinez with just two years left on the 4th floor at the Roundhouse unless she seeks a second term.
The state’s three-member U.S. House delegation still features one Republican and two Democrats, including newly elected lst Dist. Democratic Congresswoman Michelle Lujan-Grisham, and in the nation’s upper house, New Mexicans will continue to be represented by two Democratic senators.
Nonetheless, Election 2012 left behind a decidedly changed political landscape in this enchanted land.
When 1st Dist. Congressman Martin Heinrich becomes Sen. Heinrich with the New Year, he will fill the Senate seat occupied for the past three decades by Democrat Jeff Bingaman. Thirty years accrues a lot of seniority in an institution where seniority matters a great deal.

Artesia is a southeastern New Mexico town named for the artesian aquifer on which the area’s early agricultural industry was based. Today Artesia’s 10,700 residents are drawing on the city’s history as they work with the Artesia MainStreet program to remake the town’s downtown.
Artesia MainStreet is part of the New Mexico MainStreet Program, a grassroots economic development program of the New Mexico Economic Development Department. The state Legislature launched the program in 1985 to help communities remake older commercial neighborhoods as economically viable business environments while preserving local cultural and historical resources.
The program currently serves 23 affiliated MainStreet projects and six state-authorized Arts and Cultural Districts statewide.
In the late 1970s, the National Trust for Historic Preservation developed the consensus-building approach used by MainStreet participants to wed economic development and historic preservation. Community volunteers are the engines of each program, but MainStreet Program directors contribute resources, education, training and technical services as needed.

This intangible thing we call freedom is interpreted differently by just about every individual, but one aspect that’s not open for debate is that we enjoy freedom because of the sacrifices made by countless men and women of our armed forces. We must never question that freedom is worth fighting for, and dying for. That very concept was the genesis of the United States of America.

This Veteran’s Day, take the time to salute the men and women of this country’s military and the fact that they have always exemplified valor, courage and bravery. The sacrifices they’ve made throughout the history of this great country allow us all to revel in the freedom we have today; the forfeiture of one’s own life for the cause of freedom is the quintessence of all that is good, right and noble about this country.

The greatness of America’s armed forces has liberated countries, freed the oppressed, toppled tyrants and dethroned dictators. But not without sacrifice; look at virtually any corner of the globe and you’ll find a spot where U.S. troops have spilled their blood.

Thus, we often speak of our freedom yet we rarely speak of those to whom we owe it.

The Mars rover Curiosity made headlines in early August when it landed safely and set to work on the red planet. The latest on Mars continues to make headlines.
On Aug. 19, Earth received the first Martian chemical data produced by Curiosity’s ChemCam and its rock-zapping laser.
The data came by radio and took 14 minutes to speed 154 million miles back to earthlings eager to see more.
We marvel at the technical wonders that tell us what is on the next planet out from the sun.
Curiosity explores the state of Mars.
And exhibits ideas that can help with Earth’s problems.
Which technologies aboard the rover Curiosity could be adapted to local needs for environmental sampling and analysis? If we can detect chemicals and their histories on Mars, can we check out pollutants more quickly on Earth?
These questions sprang up on a bright September day at this year’s Next Big Idea Festival that our town holds each year.
A mock-up of Curiosity and the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s ChemCam stood on the well-kept grass beside the laboratory tent.
The Star Wars look of it was enough to ask “what if?”

During my career as an engineering manager for electric utilities, I often motivated the troops with the results of a national survey. Respondents were asked to rank the factors most important to their lives from a long list.
The results were, in order: air, water, food and electricity. The devastating aftermath of hurricane Sandy is another illustration of the importance of electricity to people’s health and safety.
Here in Los Alamos, our Department of Public Utilities (DPU) is directly responsible for two out of four of these most important factors.
Operating our utilities is similar to running our town; it involves all the strategic elements of planning, maintenance, emergency response, informed purchases, public safety, and reliable performance of both equipment and workers. We expect our water, gas and electric power to be there, present and future, and we expect it restored immediately, if lost. It is a responsibility that must always be taken seriously.
Utility management provides the technical and administrative skills to execute their mission. The Utility Board provides oversight and provides sufficient funding to perform the mission through rates that are fair to all served. In addition, Board oversight must be strategic, to ensure management is planning for long range needs and infrastructure maintenance.

WESST brings a global business initiative to New Mexico in a five-part series of workshops designed to empower small-business owners to make sound financial decisions.
HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs — or HP Life — is a global program sponsored by Hewlett Packard that trains the owners of microenterprises to apply information technology and business skills to establish and expand a job-creating venture.
WESST sponsors the workshops at its Albuquerque Enterprise Center.
Sessions cover the basics of finance, financial planning, invoicing, expense tracking and cash flow management.
While the workshops empower participants with information about critical business tools, business owners should always verify accounting practices with an accountant who’s familiar with their business.
Fundamentals of finance: Break-even analysis is the most basic of financial basics. Without doing this analysis, a business owner can’t know when the amount of money she’s bringing in is equal to her costs.
Determining this break-even point requires a list of variable costs associated with making the product and a list of fixed costs, such as rent or loan payments that need to be paid no matter how many products are made.

The rhetoric regarding the Charter ballot questions on initiative, referendum and recall is making the changes sound positively draconian!
Let’s look at what the most widely challenged changes actually do.
For Initiatives
1) No change in the percentage of voters needed (so not noted in the ballot question) but a change in the basis for the number of signatures required for initiatives from 15% of voters in the last general election to 15% of the number of voters in the arithmetic mean of the past two general elections. (Election Resolution 12-09, p. 4, New Section 700.2) For example:
• 15 percent of the 8,846 voters in 2010 = 1,327 (mid-term)•
• 15 percent of the 11,118 voters in 2008 = 1,668 (presidential)
• 15 percent of the mean of 9,982 voters = 1,497
So if the last general election is a typical presidential election you are better off with the Charter change!
Santa Fe requires 33.3 percent of the voters in the last mayoral election (actual numbers not available at press time). Albuquerque requires 20 percent of the average of the last four municipal elections.

Noted historian and philosopher Will Durant said, “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” I tend to agree. Our educated nation has progressively become more and more ignorant.
That being said, I would like to talk about measuring the quality of peanuts in America. Well, education actually.
If students were peanuts, quality of education would be a lot easier to measure. The 1938 Food Drug and Cosmetic Act established Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), standardized testing procedures to assess the quality of manufactured products.
Bizarre as it might seem, a peanut has far more well-defined quality metrics than a student.
Of course, it’s easier to measure quality of a peanut because one can clearly define what one expects from a peanut.
Students are a bit more dimensional, although I have in fact met a few who are chunky and some others who are rather smooth.
Let’s shelve peanuts for a moment and look at what constitutes a “high quality” of education.
To start, how does one define quality of education? What educational attributes induce students to learn? How should one evaluate the effectiveness a curriculum? Should teachers be appraised by the successes or failures of their students?
And what exactly is it that we expect from education?